The Herhausen assassination.

A terror group assasinated a German banker in 1989.

The part of unique interest is the method. The banker travelled everywhere in a heavily armored car. So, they rigged up a IED.

They put a bicycle where his car was going to pass, filled a satchel on the bike with explosive, and rigged up an infrared laser as the trigger. When the bankers car passed through the laser … boom.

But the key point, the explosive didn’t kill the banker. The car would have possibly survived that.

They’d put a copper plate in front of the explosive charge, so when the explosive blew up, they turned the copper plate into a giant molten copper bullet, flying at (through) the banker’s car at hypersonic speed.

This technique, using an “explosively formed penetrator” is common in military weapons, like RPGs and anti-tank rockets,

But building one into an IED and using an infrared laser to activate it, these were breakthrough techniques in 1989. This may be the first time they’d been used.